Thailand’s forthcoming polls will be dominated by a man from Dubai, his sister and an old Etonian

THE last cabinet meeting of Abhisit Vejjajiva's administration on May 3rd was also its longest. Ministers arrived at 8am and burned the midnight oil. And rather as Gladstone, the grand old man of 19th-century British politics, dubbed his own last cabinet meeting in March 1894 “the blubbering cabinet” (because ministers wept at his departure), so Mr Abhisit's last might be called “the spendthrift cabinet”. Ministers approved 102 spending proposals, totalling billions of dollars. Plainly, an election is in the offing.

Having promised to go to the polls in the first half of the year, Mr Abhisit is now expected to dissolve parliament as soon as he can and call an election for June 26th, or soon after. In Thailand's polarised political environment, the contest will be bitter. Many reckon the country will be lucky to escape further violence. And whatever the result, some will not accept it.

At the centre of the show is the man who has dominated and divided Thai politics for over a decade, the former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Deposed in a coup in 2006 and banned from politics in Thailand, he is now in exile in Dubai. But his devoted followers, the red shirts, have kept the flame glowing, often in the face of extreme government hostility. Scores of their number were gunned down during a prolonged protest in central Bangkok a year ago. They see this election as possibly their last chance to right the wrong of that coup. Mr Thaksin's supporters form the Pheu Thai party. It constitutes the main challenge to Mr Abhisit's ruling Democrat Party. Polls suggest it could win the most parliamentary seats, although not an outright majority.

Many non-partisan Thais had hoped that Pheu Thai would evolve into an issues-based party rather than remain a Thaksin fan-club. Fat chance. As the election nears, the opposite is happening. Mr Thaksin himself has been addressing supporters for hours by videolink and it is likely that the person who will lead the party into the election will be his own younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. A 43-year-old businesswoman, she has almost no experience of politics.

The Thaksinisation of Pheu Thai is not universally popular in the party. Some think Ms Yingluck will re-invigorate the base, but others retort that she is untested and may put off voters tired of the relentless focus on the fortunes of one man—and now one family.

Yet the party does not have a lot of choice, because of government crackdowns. Chaturon Chaisang, a former deputy prime minister, points out that in 2007 the government banned 111 leading members of Mr Thaksin's party from politics for five years. More were banned later. Mr Chaisang cannot even vote. With so many leaders sidelined, Pheu Thai's remaining talent pool is shallow.

Pheu Thai's weakness is Mr Abhisit's opportunity. He was installed by the military and, after three shaky years in power following the coups and turmoil of 2006-08, the British-born old Etonian will probably never have a better chance to win his own mandate. Even here though, Mr Thaksin influences the agenda.

The Democrat Party's main appeal lies in its successful stewardship of the economy since the economic crisis of 2008-09, which Thailand survived remarkably well. But the party also hopes to eat into Mr Thaksin's support by copying the populist economic policies that enabled him to build it up in the first place. So there has been an expansion of a social-security scheme to cover millions of workers in the informal economy; low-interest loans for taxi-drivers; free electricity for some households; cash transfers to farmers; and more money for the elderly.

The question is whether the campaign will be a proper contest of people and ideas—or another round in the near-civil war that has riven politics for over a decade. Two recent reports, one by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, the other by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, both chronicle how virtually nothing has come of the government's policy of reconciliation with the opposition. On the day of the cabinet meeting, Freedom House, a Washington-based think-tank that rates degrees of political repression, downgraded the Thai media from “partly free” to “not free”—the same as neighbouring Cambodia.

In this atmosphere some red shirts argue that it will be almost impossible to hold a free and fair election. Equally dangerous, militant anti-Thaksinites, the yellow shirts, are boycotting the vote altogether. They want the army to take over and appoint a prime minister (again). They would never accept another Thaksinite premiership. If Pheu Thai wins outright, they may well resort to violence.

The yellow shirts have been stoking nationalist feeling with heated rhetoric about border clashes with Cambodia, adding another unstable element to an already volatile mix. Behind them lurks the powerful military establishment, another bit of the Thai body politic unlikely to welcome back a new Thaksinite government. And as if that were not complicated enough, everybody is watching the declining health of the 83-year-old king, who has been in hospital since 2009 and who had a lumbar puncture this week. It's going to be a difficult few months for South-East Asia's second-biggest economy.